In the old days, there used to be colorful, tinsel New Year cards. We called these cards "greeting cards" back then. There would be snowmen, snow scenes, colorful flowers, local and foreign movie stars and artists, beautiful landscapes on these cards. Even back then, cartoons were played on Sunday mornings on TRT, the only TV channel. There were no cartoons other than Yogi Bear, Smart Bıdık, Bıcır and Gıcır, Temel Reis, and we used to look forward to Sundays to watch them. Especially the greeting cards decorated by them, we would sell out of them first. Sometimes we would choose postcards with scenes from our own city or cityscapes. Later on, more technological postcards came out. Postcards that we called "TV cards", which looked different when you held them by one corner and shook them back and forth. We all loved these. Since they were a bit more expensive, we couldn't buy them for everyone. Everywhere in the city was filled with stalls selling postcards. In front of parks, in front of movie theaters, on the sidewalks of big streets.

One of the most fun activities on cold winter days was to spend time at these postcard stalls and choose from the colorful postcards. We would buy as many of these cards as we could afford and congratulate our distant relatives and friends.

We would write our special New Year's message to each of them one by one with a fountain pen on these cards. In our most beautiful writing, even handwriting. Back then, we used to have "fine writing" classes, where we would learn how to write in cursive, composition, telegrams, letters, cards, petitions. We all had fountain pens and navy blue and black inks to fill them. We all had ink on our fingers and tongues in those years. "Licking ink" meant reading and writing and had a much deeper meaning than reading and writing today. In fact, in my early childhood years, we used to write cards, letters and all kinds of writings using ink pots (ink pots made of glass, earthenware or metal), divots and feathers. Even if these ink pots were knocked over, the ink would never spill out. Our writing lessons were always the most fun and one of our favorite lessons.

In these classes, we learned how to write greeting cards and letters, and how to write the envelopes we put them in. In those years, everything had its own etiquette. Table manners, eating and drinking manners, greeting and shaking hands manners, talking on the phone manners, getting on and off the bus, treating the elderly and the little ones manners and sitting and standing up in respect and love manners.

The greeting cards would be short and concise, limited to a few sentences with a congratulatory message. For this reason, the envelope was not glued, but folded inside. Since the greetings were not sealed, they could be understood and were sent for less money than letters.

We used to send the written greeting cards to the section labeled "greetings" at the post office. Various stamps were affixed on the greetings and letters at that time. Since our teachers at school encouraged each of us to have some kind of hobby, most of us had stamp collections then. We used to collect the stamps on the envelopes we received and exchange the extra ones with our friends. Those who couldn't afford the special stamp books sold for stamps would make their own collection books. In our free time, going through each other's collections was one of the most enjoyable times.

Since the postal work was very busy during Christmas and holidays, cards and letters would arrive later than usual. So we would send our greeting cards a week or ten days in advance so that they would be delivered on time. In fact, the postcard stalls would start opening at the beginning of December.

Then we would wait for the postmen for our mail to arrive. The postmen were very precious to all of us. Our postman would be in our neighborhood around the same time. We were almost friends now. He was a cheerful, witty, joking man. If there was no mail for me, he would shake his head from side to side and say with a sad expression, "You won't get any today, but you will definitely get some tomorrow". To those who had mail, he would joke, "I want my good news!"

Moreover, he would say, "Aunt Fatma, look, a letter from your son has arrived!", "Uncle Hakkı, look, your brother wrote from Trabzon", and he would know from whom almost all the letters and cards that arrived on the street came. Because most of the time we would chat with him. Back then, we used to look each other in the eye and we didn't have mobile phones. We managed to be in the moment, we didn't do several things at the same time.

As New Year's Eve approached and the week we entered the New Year, the house would be flooded with colorful greeting cards. We would be so happy, so delighted, we would read them over and over again. We even pinned some of them on the glass of the sideboards in the living room, on the mirrors at the entrance of the house, and they would decorate our house for months and continue to make us smile every time we looked at them. We never threw these postcards away, we couldn't. We kept them for years, we even collected them...

Now... We have grown up. We've grown up again.

Still, happy birthday to you all...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber